Break the glass, please, and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.
For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.
At school I was called Fred, which is my middle name. At that time, Fred was considered to be a bit of a horrible name, so that's why. Otherwise, I was called Titchy because I was little. I was still only about 4ft something when I left school. I grew a foot under glass in my first year as a gardener. It's really quite amazing what sun and manure can do.
They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light.
Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed.
Belshazzar had a letter,-- He never had but one; Belshazzar's correspondence Concluded and begun In that immortal copy The conscience of us all Can read without its glasses On revelation's wall.
People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.
Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.
As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.
After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.